“The problem is not what happened, but how you perceive it” – Yang Lejin, Department of Psychology, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, Seri I often use this sentence to explain the definition of “cognitive evaluation” to my patients and visitors. I often use this quote to explain the definition of “cognitive evaluation” to patients and visitors, which means that very often, things themselves are not as horrible and frustrating as we think they are, but the stimulus of the event is projected into our brain and disguised by the subconscious mind, which creates a distorted distance and image between us and the objective facts, which means that very often, we are knocked down by the trouble that we have created for ourselves. There is a saying in “Zeng Guang Xian Wen”: “Bamboo shoots become bamboos because of the fall of culm sheaths, and fish turn into dragons because of the running of the waves”. (That is, the so-called “fire rebirth”, people have to go through many failures, pain and training, in order to become a tool, but also “jade does not cut, not a tool; people do not learn, not talented” meaning.) Frustration in life is like a fork in the road, self-improvement of the choice of this bumpy and thorny road, they believe that this is to reach the success of the doorman, to see them to smell the success, so these jagged frustration became embellished with the success of the charming scenery, so that they are more and more low and despair, the success of the more convinced of the piety of the aggravation; on the contrary, when they stepped into this thorny road, complaining, lost, On the contrary, when they enter this thorny path, complaining, loss, and avoidance drain their energy and make them ultimately farther and farther away from success. As Balzac’s analogy goes, “Frustration is like a stone, a stumbling block to the weak, which stops you in your tracks, but a stepping stone to the strong, which makes you stand taller.” Winners win because they choose an optimistic, positive mindset in the face of setbacks, while the opposite can only contemplate life is full of misfortunes. There is such a classic case: psychologist Lazarus once conducted a famous experiment, the experimental procedure is as follows: he let all the subjects watch a short film of a story, which describes three stories: a worker was cut off the tip of one of his fingers by a wood saw; another worker lost his entire finger; and another worker fell unconscious after being knocked to the ground by a piece of wood. Prior to the screening of the film, he divided the subjects into three different groups: the first group was asked to concentrate on the storyline of the film without any explanation; the second group was asked to analyze the film from a technical point of view and to comment on the importance of workers’ safety while watching it; and the third group was told that the story in the film was a fake and was a stunt by an actor. As a result, the subjects had two very different emotions when they watched the same movie. The subjects in the latter two groups told the experimenter that they did not have any major mood swings after watching the movie, whereas the subjects in the first group had a significant emotional reaction, with an increased heart rate and a high level of emotional tension. This is obviously similar to how we often evaluate a person’s ability to withstand in life. When he or she has a strong ability to withstand, he or she will not be crushed in the face of setbacks, and then step by step to overcome it; on the contrary, we can only hold sympathetic hearts and say that the person’s mental ability to withstand is too poor. In fact, what we mean by ability to withstand is nothing more than the individual’s ability to read in the face of setbacks, i.e., whether the cognitive appraisal we are talking about here is a positive or a negative one. If it is a positive evaluation, it will moderately increase the degree of cerebral cortex excitement, mobilize positive emotions, so that people can concentrate on this matter, this time to play out the level is huge, even more than your personal usual ability, that is, we often say that the level of play. If the face of setbacks, a come up we imply that they can not, they can not do well and so on these negative, passive evaluation, they will only hold you back, confine your thinking, so that you are afraid in the face of difficulties, so that you can not focus on the ability to deal with the current difficulties. In the end, when you fail and lose, such emotions and opinions will lie dormant in your consciousness, and when you face another setback, they will surface again, thus plunging you into a terrible vicious circle. There is a little story about a young teacher who had just joined the profession, and something had happened to him cautiously, for fear that something might go wrong there. Once the principal went to listen to his lecture, he was overly nervous, coupled with inadequate preparation, so in the course of the lecture, he said the wrong sentence. He fell into deep self-reproach and remorse, so much so that he could not extricate himself from it. He often thought, “It’s all over now! I am useless, and my leaders and colleagues will look down on me. This negative and pessimistic thoughts bother him all day long, dragging him into a vicious cycle of repeated situations, so that he later developed to the point that he thought he had no value, living is too meaningless, I have no face to face anyone, I might as well die. What is the problem? Is it frustration? This seems to be the culprit that caused this emotional turmoil. But let’s think about it this way. Doesn’t something similar happen to everyone? Saying the wrong thing and doing the wrong thing in front of the leader. Students are nervous about exams, do not play well, failing grades and so on, but it seems that all of us live a normal life, not and this young teacher as the death of life. It seems that the problem is not just in the triggering event. Moving on, the way he handled the incident was behavioral: overstimulation combined with inadequate lesson planning. Here we find a breakthrough point, nervousness is inevitable, when people face a thing they think is very important, it is inevitable to be nervous, this is a physiological reaction, we need to deal with the problem of moderate nervousness, so that we can maintain a high state of mental concentration. But this young teacher is overly nervous, there is a degree of everything, once more than a good thing has become a bad thing, which may be one of the reasons for his pessimism. So what is the cause of the overstimulation? Inadequate preparation for the lesson seems to be the main reason for the error, and it could have been avoided, but even if we are well prepared, there is no guarantee that there will be a slip of the tongue or other mistakes during the lecture, and we cannot expect other unforeseen circumstances to affect our state of mind, so it seems that inadequate preparation for the lesson is not the main reason either. What is his cognitive appraisal in dealing with this matter? First of all, he was cautious, afraid of making a mistake, and it was this fear of making a mistake that put him in a state of overstimulation (here, we find the culprit of overstimulation). Can be said to be afraid of what comes what, the error still appeared, at this time, he is the evaluation is what? “It’s all over, I’m useless, the leadership and colleagues will look down on me.” It is this wrong evaluation of an originally unavoidable mistake led him to the extreme, and finally developed into self-blame, depression and even despair. Therefore, when we face setbacks, it is not exactly the difficulty itself that breaks us down, but our own beliefs that lead us down the wrong path.